Bouncy Pixar Lamp IRL

You remember the adorable Pixar lamp, that most darling form of branding in millennial history. Thanks to Adam Ben-Dror, Shanshan Zhou, and Joss Dogget here is ol’ lampy, eerily come to life. The trio created an animatronic lamp called Pinokio that, much like it’s cartoon predecessor, has emotional characteristics.

According to the team, the project is “an exploration into the expressive and behavioral potentials of robotic computing.”

In non-geek terms, the lamp has some level of artificial intelligence, becoming responsive to its environment, and even being able to hear sounds. The lamp is tricked out with facial recognition software, a webcam, and Arduino (an open source micro-controller.) As you can see in the video, it “craves” human attention and can actually turn itself back on after being shut off. Cute, but also freaking terrifying.

Are you ready for your toaster going Haley Joel Osment a la AI on your ass?